"Modesty"

Tanzanians are shocked by a lot of American behavior. For instance, I'm often asked "If a girl is walked in on when she's bathing, is it true she'll cover her breasts as well as her crotch?" and I say yes and explain how people don't even like to breast feed in public. Meanwhile, I think have a common law marriage with any woman who's knees I've seen - from the bottom of a woman's rib cage to below her knees is considered her "sacred area".

I'm often told that African women are more modest then Western women and the evidence is the way they dress. They wear dresses and over that a beach towel sized cloth on their torsos and another wrapped around their waists. Colors are patterns are encouraged not to match.

It's true that you can't see a woman's body, but these layers of cloth (I believe) are actually a not demure way of hiding the shapes of thighs and hips but are a way of making every woman like a wall. These clothes strip away the ravages of numerous births and malnutrition and allow us to see an African woman naked down to her essence: a frankly scary Force Of Nature.